Morning prayers in Easter with USPG: (33) 11 May 2023

Archbishop Higbert, first Archbishop of Lichfield, and Thomas Cantelupe, once a prebendary and then Bishop of Hereford, in a stained-glass window in the Chapter House in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

This is the Fifth Week of Easter. Two of us are staying in York for a few days, having arrived here late on Monday. We visited Whitby yesterday, and we are planning to visit Knaresborough later today.

Before this day gets busy, I am taking some time this morning for prayer and reflection. Following my recent visit to Lichfield Cathedral, I am reflecting each morning this week in these ways:

1, Short reflections on the windows in the Chapter House in Lichfield Cathedral;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

The window in Lichfield Cathedral with Archbishop Higbert and Saint Thomas Cantelupe is in memory of Canon Jeremiah Finch Smith (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Archbishop Higbert and Saint Thomas Cantelupe window:

The Chapter House in Lichfield Cathedral is currently the venue for the exhibition ‘Library and Legacy,’ showcasing the collections in the cathedral library.

The chapter house was decorated with frescoes and stained glass in the late 15th century by Thomas Heywood, who was Dean of Lichfield in 1457-1492. The glass in the Chapter House once contained figures of the apostles, with other depictions above. These all predated the Cromwellian era, and were destroyed by the Puritans during the Civil War in the mid-17th century.

In the 19th century, the glazing of the chapter house displayed armorial bearings, more or less correct, in imitation of glass known to have ornamented the cathedral in the past. This armorial glass gradually gave way to glass representing scenes in the history of the cathedral. Six of the windows were glazed with these images in the late 19th and early 20th century, and the original but unfilled plan was to fill all the windows in the Chapter House.

The fifth window I am looking at this morning, like many of the windows in this series, is by Charles Eamer Kempe, and this window is in memory of Canon Jeremiah Finch Smith.

The figures in this three-light window represent Archbishop Higbert, first Archbishop of Lichfield, and Saint Thomas Cantelupe, once a prebendary of Lichfield Cathedral and Archdeacon of Stafford and then Bishop of Hereford.

Higbert or Hygeberht was the Bishop of Lichfield from 779 and Archbishop of Lichfield after the elevation of Lichfield to an archdiocese some time after 787, during the reign of King Offa of Mercia. However, little is known of Higbert’s background.

King Offa succeeded in making Lichfield an archbishopric, but this was unpopular with the Archbishops of Canterbury. After Offa’s death, his distant relative Coenwulf became King of Mercia, and petitioned the pope to have Lichfield returned to a bishopric. Pope Leo III agreed in 803, but by then Higbert was no longer considered a bishop, and he is listed as an abbot at the council that oversaw the demotion of Lichfield in 803. The date of his death is unknown.

Thomas de Cantilupe (1218-1282) taught canon law at the University of Oxford, where he became Chancellor in 1261. He was Archdeacon of Stafford when he was appointed Lord Chancellor of England in 1264. He became Bishop of Hereford in 1275, and died in 1282. He was canonised by Pope John XXII in 1320. His feast day is on 2 October.

The scenes in the lower panels of this window continue the historical series in the Chapter House windows, and show two bishops of Lichfield, from the ninth and the 12th centuries.

Bishop Higbert’s successor, Bishop Aldulf, is shown at the Council of Cloveshoo in the year 803, resigning as Archbishop of Lichfield and renouncing the metropolitan powers in favour of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He died ca 814-816.

Roger de Clinton, who was Bishop of Lichfield in 1129-1148, is shown building a new cathedral in Lichfield in honour of Saint Mary and Saint Chad. Roger de Clinton also laid out the main streets of Lichfield in a grid pattern, still in evidence almost 800 years later.

This window is in memory of Canon Jeremiah Finch Smith (1815-1895). He was the eldest son of Jeremiah Smith (1771-1854), High Master of Manchester Grammar School. Jeremiah Finch Smith was the Rector of Aldridge, Staffordshire, from 1849, Rural Dean of Walsall from 1862, and a prebendary of Lichfield Cathedral. He published sermons and tracts, and edited Admission Register of the Manchester School (3 vols, 1866-1874), and Notes on the Parish of Aldridge, Staffordshire (1884-1889, 2 parts).

The lower parts of the window show Archbishop Aldulf renouncing his metropolitan powers, and Bishop Roger de Clinton building a new cathedral in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

John 15: 9-11 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 9 ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.’

A late 19th century bookplate for Canon Jeremiah Finch Smith

Today’s prayer:

The theme this week in the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is ‘The Work and Mission of the Laity.’ USPG’s Regional Manager for Africa, Fran Mate, reflected on Sunday on the work and mission of the laity.

The USPG Prayer invites us to pray this morning (Thursday 11 May 2023):

Let us pray for a mutuality of relationship between lay and ordained. May those in positions of power honour their responsibility and work to build up the body of Christ.

Collect:

Almighty God,
who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ
have overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life:
grant that, as by your grace going before us
you put into our minds good desires,
so by your continual help
we may bring them to good effect;
through Jesus Christ our risen Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion:

Eternal God,
whose Son Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life:
grant us to walk in his way,
to rejoice in his truth,
and to share his risen life;
who is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

The coats-of-arms of Bishop John Hackett and of the Diocese of Lichfield, representing the arms of Bishop Roger de Clinton, two bishops who rebuilt Lichfield Cathedral, on the railway bridge at Upper John Street, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Finding links between Limerick and the idea of an ‘Anglican Communion’

The statue of Bishop John Jebb in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick … his nephew, Canon John Jebb, first uses the term ‘Anglican Communion’ in 1843 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This is proving to be a busier week that I expected.

On Sunday morning, I preached my last sermon as a canon of Christ Church Cathedral. This came at the end of a busy working weekend, when I finished teaching on the part-time MTh course. So, an invitation to dinner with friends who live on the banks of Lough Ramor on the borders of Meath and Cavan, was very welcome indeed on Sunday afternoon.

Now I am in the middle of finalising details for the full-time module on Anglicanism, which is my final module to teach in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and at the same time there are papers to have signed and details to complete before Friday evening’s Service of Welcome and Introduction in Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick.

In the midst of all this busyness and preparation for the Anglicanism module and the move to Co Limerick, I was distracted when I was reminded once again of the connections between Limerick and the term ‘Anglican Communion.’

The terms Anglican and Anglicanism derive etymologically from the Latin anglicanus, meaning English. It is a term that predates the Reformation and that had medieval usage.

So far, the earliest use of the term I can find is in Ireland, as early as 1172, almost half a century before it is used in England.

In the 12th century, separate and various Irish Rites were being used liturgically throughout the island. But these were abolished, at the Synod of Cashel in 1172, when the Roman Rite juxta quod Anglicana observat Ecclesia, or the rite ‘as observed by the Anglican Church,’ was finally substituted.

This is almost half a century before the Magna Carta in 1215, which refers to Anglicana ecclesia, the English Church. The same phrase is used again at the time of the Reformation – in 1534 in the act confirming the royal supremacy, and in 1562 in John Jewel’s defence of the English Reformation, Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, however, the term ‘Anglican’ begins to refer more specifically to a distinct theological position. The Dublin-born political philosopher Edmund Burke refers to ‘Catholicks, Anglicans or Calvinists,’ and the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay to Anglican doctrine. The French form anglicanisme occurs, it seems, for the first time in 1817, presumably by analogy with gallicanisme, and John Henry Newman uses the phrase ‘Anglicanism’ from 1838 on.

The first use of the term ‘Anglican Communion’ is by John Jebb in a book written while he was in Limerick

Gregory Cameron is a former Deputy Secretary General of the Anglican Communion and is now Bishop of St Asaph in Wales. He identifies the first use of the term ‘Anglican Communion’ in 1843 in the title of a book by John Jebb, The Choral Service of the United Church of England and Ireland, being an Inquiry into the Liturgical System of the Cathedral and Collegiate Foundations of the Anglican Communion (London: James Parker, 1843).

This John Jebb (1805-1886) was born in Dublin, the nephew of John Jebb (1775-1833), Bishop of Limerick, and he was a canon of Limerick Cathedral until he moved to England in 1843, the year this book was published.

John Jebb was briefly a curate of Saint Mary’s, then a fashionable church in inner-city Dublin, from 1835. But most of his early church life was spent as the Prebendary of Donoughmore in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, from 1832 to 1843. A year after arriving in Limerick he married Frances Bourke in 1833. She was a daughter of General Sir Richard Bourke (1777-1855), the Irish-born Governor of New South Wales (1831–1837), who lived at Thornfleld, in Co Limerick. On his return to Ireland, Bourke was High Sheriff of Co Limerick but declined to stand for Limerick in the 1841 election. He is buried in Castleconnell.

Soon after John Jebb and Frances Bourke were married, his uncle, John Jebb, Bishop of Limerick, died near Wandsworth, Surrey, on 9 December 1833. Ten years later, John Jebb left Limerick in 1843, when he was appointed Rector of Peterstow in Herefordshire. He later became Prebendary of Preston Wynne in Hereford Cathedral (1858-1870) and a canon residentiary of Hereford Cathedral from 1870.

Jebb was a leading authority on the Anglican choral tradition and a significant figure in the English choral revival. When Walter Hook, vicar of Leeds, proposed to reinstate choral services and a surpliced choir at Leeds Parish Church in 1841, he turned to his friend Jebb for advice.

With his cathedral background in Saint Mary’s, Limerick, Jebb argued that in churches with a choir, the desired musical effect should not be marred by ‘the roar of the congregation.’ He persuaded Hook to adopt the cathedral form of service at Leeds rather than the alternative model demonstrated by the Revd Frederick Oakeley at the Margaret Chapel in London, where the role of the choir was to lead the congregation in response, hymn and psalm.

Jebb’s policy was first made public in Three Lectures on the Cathedral Service (1841). A more scholarly and definitive treatment of the topic was published in 1843, the year he left Limerick for Hereford, in his The Choral Service of the United Church of England and Ireland (1843). This book was an inquiry in the low state of service and music provision in cathedrals and collegiate churches in the Church of Ireland and the Church of England, and it is here that for the first time that the term ‘Anglican Communion’ is used.

Four years later, in 1847, Horatio Southgate, the Missionary Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the Dominions of the Sultan, spoke of ‘each of the three branches of the Anglican Communion …, namely, the English, the Scotch, and the American … I then combined the three under the title, ‘The Anglican Branch of the Church of Christ’.’

In 1851, the Bishop of Maryland, William Whittingham, referred to the need for a common code of canon law that could be recognised ‘by the whole of the Churches of the two Communions.’ By the mid-19th century, it was common to refer to the growing family of Anglican and Episcopal churches as ‘two communions.’

The term ‘Anglican Communion’ is eventually used as a defining term at the first Lambeth Conference in 1867.

Meanwhile, Jebb had funded the building costs of the new rectory at Peterstow. Saint Peter’s Church at Peterstow was restored in the 1860s under Jebb with Sir George Gilbert Scott as architect, and reopened in 1866, a year before that first Lambeth Conference.

John Jebb died in Peterstow on 8 January 1886. His brother-in-law, Richard Bourke (1812-1904), was an assistant commissioner for the Poor Law in Ireland in 1847 and was Deputy-Lieutenant for Co Limerick.